Mr. Bleak Wanders (New Haven, 1671-1871)

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Mr. Bleak Wanders

(New Haven, 1671-1871)

Because actually things hadn’t gone well for Prosperity Bleak in Boston. Or maybe they had gone too well: after a few years of preaching Purposefull Suffering, his congregation was larger even than that of
John Wilson (who had a knack for describing the fires of Hell). Then
it was discovered that no such person as Sextus Halbmond had ever lived
in Leiden, or anywhere else. The only Bleak anyone could find a record
of was a locksmith's apprentice, who had come to Boston from Dorset.

As a blind locksmith (this is William Lyall again: really the only source for the early days of Bleak College), Mr. Bleak no more believed in Heaven than he did
in Halbmond. He believed what his fingers told him: that there was no
other world but the one that contained England and Boston and the great
wilderness beyond. Likewise, his “Purposefull Suffering” had
no end but the provocation of earthly delight. And what delight! Stevedores
rolled about on the floors of sheds that stank of fish; coffee fiends
flung their hands in the air and cried that they would never sleep again;
in the roofless churches, men and women huddled, eating oranges and whispering
secrets that they could not remember afterwards.

Boston was not built for that kind of happiness. Wilson preached against
the “Fishy Bleaks,” who were, he said, relics of the same
“pagan creation” that had peopled America with “Salvages”;
and John Winthrop railed against “those followers of Mr. Bleak who
lie upon the Common Grass and rub one another's Haire.” In March
of 1654, a warrant was issued for Bleak's arrest on the grounds of witchcraft
and incitement to riot. The officers went to Bleak's house, but they found
nothing except a treatise on raising demons from Hell (planted by Winthrop)
and a bag of oranges.

In May, 1652, Prosperity Bleak visited the Island of Error, where he
preached a sermon on “The Plan of Providence,” which mentioned
ropes, pulleys, a fire, wheels and things that had to be seen to be believed,
but how they fit together, or what they had to do with Providence, no
one could understand.

In August of the same year Bleak narrowly escaped arrest in a Northampton
tavern, where he had issued challenges to the “backwoods saint”
Samuel Mather (father of Increase, grandfather of Cotton) to “pit
the Invisible against the Felt.” Bleak fled to the wilderness. In
1656 or 57, he was said to be living among the Indians west of the Hudson
River, where he impersonated a French trader named Ablette. In 1662, a
blind Mr. Blick opened a shop on Gansevoort Street, in New Amsterdam,
where he dealt in artificial pearls.

In 1664, when New Amsterdam was handed over to the English, Mr. Blick
vanished, and there was no trace of Bleak until the autumn of 1671, when
he arrived in New Haven.